CHAPTER 5 Virtuosos

Paganini and Liszt

Chapter:

CHAPTER 5 Virtuosos

Source:

MUSIC IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

Richard Taruskin

The enlargement and social broadening of the musical public in response to new economic, demographic, and technological conditions
was the great nineteenth-century musical change. Its most immediate effect, and one with an eventually profound if sometimes
indirect influence on all performing and composing activity, is often called “the democratization of taste.” Attitudes toward
it vary with attitudes toward democracy itself. From the aristocratic standpoint the democratization of taste meant the debasement
of taste. From the standpoint of the bourgeoisie it meant the enlivening, the enrichment, but above all the enhanced accessibility
and social relevance of art.